celina @wbbwhorez - Tumblr Blog

when did you get hot?

Part 1

The drive down to Malibu takes Paige Bueckers six hours, two iced coffees, and one very long internal debate about whether she should turn around.

She doesn't, obviously. She never could say no to your brother.

That's what she tells herself as she pulls off the PCH and onto the long coastal road that winds toward the address Tyler texted her three days ago, windows down, the smell of salt air replacing the recycled AC she's been breathing since Connecticut.

It's the last week of June. Her season is over , her team fell in the second round, which still sits in her chest like a stone she can't cough up, and when Tyler had called two weeks ago with the offer of a summer at his family's beach house, she'd said yes before he'd even finished the sentence.

"You need to decompress, Paige. You always do this! you lose and you disappear into a gym somewhere and don't come out until October. Just come. The house is huge. My parents are barely there. It'll be like college, minus the dining hall food."

She'd laughed at that. It felt like the first real laugh she'd had in weeks.

What Tyler had failed to mention, conveniently, she thinks now, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter as the house comes into view at the end of the private drive, is that she wouldn't be the only guest.

The house is beautiful. Of course it is.

She's known Tyler since they were both eighteen, freshman orientation at UConn, and she's always known his family had money the way some people have good bone structure. quietly, obviously, like it was just a fact of nature.

But she's never actually been here before. He talked about it constantly — "the Malibu house, the Malibu house" — and now she understands why.

It sits right on the bluff, all white cedar shingles and floor-to-ceiling glass, a wraparound deck that looks straight out over the Pacific. The sun is already dipping toward the water, painting everything gold and coral, and for a moment Paige just sits in her car with the engine off and lets herself feel something other than the weight of the season she couldn't finish the way she wanted.

Then the front door opens.

And everything she thought she was feeling gets knocked clean out of her.

°•○●○•°

You don't see her at first. You're looking back over your shoulder, laughing at something Tyler said from inside the house, one hand braced on the doorframe, the other holding a glass of white wine.

You're wearing a white linen dress that the ocean breeze is doing absolutely nothing to keep still, your hair longer than Paige remembers, sun-streaked at the ends. You look like a painting someone made specifically to ruin her summer.

When you turn and see the car in the drive, your expression shifts. Surprise, then recognition, then something that smooths itself out so quickly Paige almost misses it.

You smile.

"Paige."

Just her name. Just one word. But you say it like you've practiced being casual about it, and she doesn't know what to do with that.

She gets out of the car because she has to. She grabs her bag from the back seat because her hands need something to hold.

She walks up the stone path because Tyler is already appearing behind you in the doorway, arms open, grinning that grin that hasn't changed since he was eighteen.

"She lives!" he says, pulling her into a hug that lifts her off the ground slightly, which she tolerates because she's known him long enough to have no dignity left around him. "I was starting to think you weren't coming."

"Traffic on the 1," she says into his shoulder.

"It's always the 1." He pulls back, holds her at arm's length, looks her over with the focused concern of someone who has watched her play basketball for seven years and therefore knows how to read her body the way other people read faces. "You look tired."

"Gee, thanks,ty ."

"I mean it affectionately." He releases her, steps aside, and gestures at you with the casual ease of a man who has absolutely no idea what he's just done. "You remember my sister."

Paige looks at you.

You look at her.

"Yeah," Paige says. "I remember."

The thing is, she does remember. That's the problem.

She remembers you at fifteen, all elbows and attitude, rolling your eyes at her and Tyler from across the living room while they argued about basketball stats. She remembers you at seventeen, sharper somehow, quieter, reading thick books on the couch with your legs thrown over the armrest while the rest of the house was loud around you.

She remembers Tyler saying, offhand, "my sister got into Harvard" like it was the most expected thing in the world, and Paige had thought, of course she did.

She does not remember you looking like this. Gone was the nerd that sat in her room all day with braces and glasses too hig for her face. Your glasses turned to contacts and your braces were gone and replaced with perfect pearly whites.

She tries not to think about it too hard as Tyler gives her the tour, the kitchen that opens onto the deck, the living room with its enormous sectional and fireplace, the bedrooms upstairs with their ocean views.

You trail along behind them, refilling your wine glass at some point, offering one-word commentary that makes Tyler groan and makes Paige bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

Your room is at the end of the hall. Hers is two doors down.

Great.

"Dinner's at eight," Tyler says, stopping at her door. "I'm grilling. Don't argue with me about it."

"I wasn't going to argue with you about it."

"You were thinking about it." He points at her face. "I know your argument face. Get settled, come down whenever." He claps her on the shoulder and disappears back down the hall, already pulling out his phone, already distracted, already Tyler.

She pushes open her door and drops her bag on the bed.

The room is airy and white, with a sliding glass door that opens onto a small private balcony. She stands out there for a minute, hands on the railing, looking at the water. The sun is almost gone now, just a thin line of fire at the horizon. The waves are steady and low. Everything smells like salt and warm wood.

She hears the balcony door two rooms down slide open.

She doesn't look over.

She goes back inside and starts unpacking.

°•○●○•°

Dinner is hard but Tyler makes it easy he always does, filling silence with commentary, asking Paige about the season with enough gentleness that it doesn't feel like picking at a wound.

You sit across from Paige at the outdoor table, legs tucked under you in your chair, eating grilled salmon and asking your brother questions about his job in that way you have of sounding genuinely interested while also being slightly devastating about it.

"You're working sixty-hour weeks for a firm that made how much last quarter?" you say, tilting your head.

"A lot," Tyler says.

"And you're happy?"

"I'm comfortable."

"Mm." You take a sip of wine. "Those aren't the same thing."

"Y/N is pre-law," Tyler says to Paige, as though Paige needs the footnote. "She's going to save the world and make me feel bad about my life choices simultaneously."

"I'm in law school, actually," you correct mildly. "Second year."

Paige does the math without meaning to. You're twenty. Second year at Harvard Law at twenty.

She knew you were smart, she always knew that, but sitting across from you in the warm light of the deck, watching you talk about constitutional litigation with the same ease most people use to talk about the weather, she feels the number land differently than she expected.

Twenty.

She's twenty-five. She's been in the WNBA for two years. She's been playing basketball since she could walk. She has a brand and a platform and a championship she still hasn't won. She has a life that is loud and watched and scheduled down to the hour.

And you are twenty years old and already more certain of yourself than most people she's ever met.

She looks away.

"What about you?" you ask.

She glances back. You're looking at her directly, the way you've been careful not to do for most of the evening. Your eyes are steady. Curious. Like you're used to asking questions people don't expect.

"What about me?"

"Are you happy?" A beat. "Or just comfortable?"

The table is quiet for a second. Tyler is looking between the two of you with the mild alarm of someone who has realized a conversation has moved somewhere he wasn't tracking.

Paige holds your gaze.

"I don't know yet," she says honestly.

You nod, like that's an acceptable answer. Like you respect it more than if she'd said yes without thinking."Fair enough," you say, and look back at the water.

Eventually, the house quiets down.

Tyler goes to bed at eleven, citing an early call in the morning. You disappear not long after, saying goodnight without ceremony, barefoot on the deck stairs, wine glass in hand.

Paige stays outside with a beer she stopped drinking an hour ago, watching the water go dark and listening to the waves.

She stays out there long enough that the moon clears the roofline and the air gets genuinely cold and she has no more excuses.

She goes inside. Locks up. Climbs the stairs.

The hall is dark and quiet. Your door is closed. There's no light under it.

Paige stands outside her own room for a moment, hand on the door handle.

She's Tyler's sister, she thinks.

She's twenty years old. She's your best friend's little sister who you haven't seen in years and who is now somehow the most unsettling person you've ever shared a dinner table with and you have an entire summer left.

She goes inside.

She does not sleep for a very long time.

°•○●○•°

The first thing you notice about Paige Bueckers in the morning is that she runs.

Not like a casual, clear-your-head kind of run. Like an extreme run. You're up at six-thirty because you've never really been able to sleep past sunrise, some deeply annoying habit your body picked up during your first year of law school and never let go of, and you're standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the coffee to finish when you see her through the glass.

She's already on the beach. Tank top, shorts, hair pulled back, earbuds in. Moving like the sand isn't even a factor.

You watch her for probably longer than you should before the coffee maker beeps and gives you something else to do with your hands.

Tyler is useless before nine. You've known this your whole life. He comes downstairs at eight-fifty looking like he lost a fight with his own pillow, pours himself coffee without speaking, sits at the kitchen island and stares at the wall for a full four minutes before he becomes a person again.

You're used to it. You grew up with it.

What you're less used to is Paige coming through the back door at seven-fifteen, flushed from the run, pulling her earbuds out, going straight for the fridge like she owns the place.

Which, fair– she and Tyler have had that kind of friendship since college. The kind where you stop being a guest in each other's spaces pretty fast.

She doesn't notice you at first.

You notice everything about her.

The way she's breathing hard but not wrecked by it.

The way she grabs the orange juice and drinks directly from the carton and then seems to remember herself and checks over her shoulder.

The way she relaxes when she thinks no one's watching, shoulders dropping, jaw unclenching, like the version of Paige that exists when no one's looking is softer than the one she leads with.

Then she turns around and sees you at the counter and the soft thing shutters closed again.

"Morning," she says.

"You ran," you say, because apparently that's what your mouth decides to do.

She looks down at herself like she's confirming. "Yeah."

"How far?"

"Five miles maybe. The beach goes on for a while."

You nod. Pour your coffee. Slide the second mug you already pulled down toward her side of the counter without really thinking about it, because you'd heard her leave and figured she'd want something hot when she got back. It's not a big deal.

It's just coffee.

Paige looks at the mug. Looks at you.

Doesn't say anything. Just picks it up.

The day goes on and the lingering looks dont stop.

Tyler has a call at nine that runs until noon, which he apologizes for approximately seven times before disappearing upstairs with his laptop. You tell him it's fine. Paige tells him it's fine. You both mean it, probably for different reasons.

The house goes quiet in that particular way beach houses do in the morning — all light and salt air and the sound of waves doing most of the heavy lifting.

You take your coffee out to the deck. Paige follows, which you maybe weren't expecting, and sits in the chair diagonal from yours rather than the one directly next to you, which you maybe clock more than you should.

For a while neither of you says anything. Which should be awkward. Isn't, really.

The water is ridiculous this morning. All deep blue and glittering, the waves easy and slow.

There's nobody else on the beach yet, just some birds picking at the tide line and a sailboat way out on the horizon doing absolutely nothing at a very elegant pace.

"You always been a morning person?" Paige asks eventually.

"Since first year of law school. My body just decided six-thirty was a reasonable time to be conscious and never went back."

She makes a face. "That sounds like a nightmare."

"It was at first. Now I kind of like it. Everything's quiet." You look out at the water. "You're up early too."

"I run every morning. Doesn't matter where I am."

"Even in the off-season?"

She wraps both hands around her mug. "Especially in the off-season."

You don't push on that. You'd watched enough of her season, more than you'd told anyone, honestly, more than made total sense, to understand what the second round exit had cost her. It was written in how she carried herself like she was still doing the math on something that didn't add up yet.

"Tyler says you're going back to training in September," you say instead.

"August, probably."

"That's not much of a summer."

She glances at you sideways. "What do you do with yours? Between semesters."

"Read. Mostly." You tuck your feet up onto the edge of the chair. "I had an internship last summer. Public defender's office in Boston. This summer Tyler basically begged me to come here first before I find something else, so." You gesture loosely at the ocean. "Here I am."

"Harvard Law at twenty," Paige says. Not mean. Not sycophantic either. Just factual, like she's been sitting with it.

"Don't make it weird."

The corner of her mouth moves. Almost a smile. "I'm not making it weird."

"You said it like it was a diagnosis."

"I said it like it was impressive."

You look at her. She looks back. The almost-smile doesn't go anywhere.

"Tyler brags about you constantly," she says. "Like, constantly. I've known your GPA for three years."

"Oh god."

"3.98."

"I'm going to push him off this deck."

She does smile then, and it does something completely unreasonable to the morning. It's not like you haven't seen Paige Bueckers smile before, you grew up watching her come through your front door

you watched her play basketball on TV, you've seen her in interviews and on her Instagram and in all the places she exists publicly. But in person, six feet away, post-run with her coffee going cold in her hands, it's different in a way you don't have a clean word for.

You end up on the beach by ten.

It's not a planned thing. You'd gone inside to get sunscreen and come back out to find Paige already heading down the steps to the sand with two towels under her arm, and it would've been weirder to not follow than to follow, so you followed.

She picks a spot close to the water. Spreads her towel, sits down, pulls her knees up. You drop yours a foot or so away and lie on your back with your arm over your eyes and just let the sun do what it wants.

For a while it's just nice. Easy in a way you didn't really expect. The waves. The heat. The sound of the occasional bird. Paige doesn't feel like someone you have to perform for, which is more unusual than it should be.

Law school is full of people who make you feel like every conversation is a deposition.

"Can I ask you something?" you say to the inside of your elbow.

"Sure."

"What's it actually like. Playing in the WNBA."

A pause. "What do you mean."

"I mean , you've been doing this since you were what, eight? Like this has been your whole life. You go out and play in front of thousands of people and everyone has opinions about everything you do and your career has a clock on it in a way that most careers don't." You move your arm and look at the sky. "I just wonder what that actually feels like from the inside. Not the press answer."

She's quiet for long enough that you think maybe you overstepped.

"Honest answer?" she says finally.

"Yeah."

"It feels like the only thing that makes complete sense and also the most pressure I've ever felt in my life at the same time. Like every day." She pulls at the edge of her towel. "I love it more than anything. And it's also the thing that scares me most. Those two things don't cancel each other out, they just kind of exist together."

You think about that.

"That's how I feel about law," you say.

She turns her head and looks at you.

You turn yours and look at her.

You're close enough that you could count the freckles across her nose from here. You don't. You're careful not to.

"Yeah?" she says.

"Yeah."

Another beat. The wave that comes in is bigger than the others and rushes up the sand closer than expected, stopping just short of your towels, and you both react at the same time sitting up fast, pulling your things back, and then you're both just sitting there closer than you were before, laughing a little breathlessly at nothing.

Her shoulder is almost touching yours.

She notices. You feel her notice.

She shifts back. Just barely. Just enough.

"We should probably move back," she says.

"Probably," you agree.

Neither of you moves for another scond.

Then you both do, at the same time, gathering towels and relocating up the sand without making it a thing, talking about nothing, whether Tyler's going to actually grill again tonight or if you can convince him to go into town for food, what the water temperature is probably like, nothing — and it's fine.

It's totally fine.

°•○●○•°

Tyler emerges from his call at noon looking mildly traumatized and immediately improves upon seeing that you've brought lunch stuff back from the little market down the coast, bread, good cheese, tomatoes, some kind of fancy chips Paige picked up because she said she'd been thinking about them for an hour.

The three of you eat on the deck and Tyler is loud and funny and completely himself and it's easy in the way that being with your brother has always been easy, that specific comfort of someone who has known you your whole life.

You're grateful for it. Genuinely.

But you're also aware, in some back corner of your mind, that Paige laughs differently when Tyler's there. More open. Less measured.

Like with Tyler around she knows exactly who she is in the room, and without him she's still figuring out who she is around you specifically.

You don't know what to do with that information.

You file it away somewhere and eat your lunch and let Tyler talk.

It's not until later when it was almost nine, the sun fully gone, Tyler on the phone with someone from work inside that it actually happens.

You're on the deck with the string lights on and a glass of wine and your property law notes open on your lap because old habits, and Paige comes out and drops onto the couch across from you and looks at the notes and says:

"You're studying. On vacation."

"It's light reading."

"It's property law."

"I find property law soothing."

She stares at you. "Something is genuinely wrong with you."

"Multiple people have said that."

She shakes her head but she's smiling and she pulls her own phone out, probably to watch film or scroll or something, and for a while you're just both there. In the quiet. In the lights. The ocean going dark beyond the railing.

At some point you look up and she's not on her phone anymore.

She's just sitting there looking at the water with an expression you don't have a name for. Something unguarded. Something she didn't mean to leave visible.

You look back down at your notes.

You read the same paragraph four times.

You don't retain a single word of it.

The next day, it too hot for morning.

That specific Malibu heat that doesn't mess around, the kind that comes off the water and the sand at the same time and just sits on you.

You'd been inside most of the morning, coffee, notes, a call with your study group back in Boston that ran longer than it needed to,and by the time you come downstairs in your bikini with a towel over your shoulder, Tyler and Paige are already on the deck.

Tyler doesn't even look up from his phone.

Paige looks up.

And then looks away so fast she almost gives herself whiplash.

You clock it. You don't say anything about it. You go to the fridge and get a water bottle and when you come back through the sliding door Paige is very focused on something on her phone screen that she's definitely not actually reading.

"Beach?" you ask, mostly at Tyler.

"Can't," he says. "Another call in twenty." He says it with genuine suffering in his voice. "Go without me. I'll come down later."

You look at Paige.

She looks at you.

At your face. Specifically at your face.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

So you grab your stuff and head out.

She's quiet on the way down the steps. You're used to that from her now, three days in and you've already started learning her silences, which ones mean she's comfortable and which ones mean she's working something out. This one feels like the second kind.

The beach is busier than it's been. A few families further down. A couple of surfers out past the break. The water is that impossible California blue that still gets you even though you've been coming here your whole life.

You drop your towel and pull your shorts down without thinking about it, you'd thrown them on over your bikini bottoms for the walk down, and when you straighten up and reach back to tie your hair Paige is looking out at the water with the focused intensity of someone actively choosing not to look at something else.

The back of your neck gets warm and it has nothing to do with the sun.

You sit down. She sits down next to you, closer than yesterday, and pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them and stares at the horizon like it owes her something.

"You surf?" you ask.

"No. Always meant to learn." She nods toward the guys out past the break. "Tyler tried to teach me once. Years ago. I fell off approximately every four seconds."

"Tyler's a terrible teacher."

"The worst." A pause. "You surf?"

"I do. Nothing imoressive or competition level, I just grew up coming here so I picked up most of it ."

She glances over. Just briefly. "Of course you did."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing." But the corner of her mouth is doing that thing again. "You just, you do everything like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's kind of annoying."

You look at her. "You think I'm annoying?"

"See now, i didnt say that!" She cut you off."I think you make things look easy."

"They're not."

"I know." She says it quietly. Like she actually does know.

You lie back on your towel and close your eyes and let the sun press down on you and try not to think too hard about the way she said that

Okay so here's the thing.

You're not oblivious.

You noticed yesterday on the deck. You noticed this morning in the kitchen when you reached past her to get the coffee filters and she went very still in a way that had nothing to do with you being in her space.

You've noticed the way her eyes move and then stop moving and then find somewhere very neutral and specific to land.

You've noticed.

You just don't know what to do with it because the situation is complicated. She's Tyler's best friend. She's been Tyler's best friend since before you were old enough to have opinions about anything.

She's twenty-five and you're twenty and that gap felt enormous when you were fifteen and she was coming over to watch film with your brother, and it feels different now but it's still there, and beyond all of that –

You don't actually know if you're reading it right. You're good at reading people. Law school made you better. But Paige Bueckers is layered in ways that are hard to get underneath, and the last thing you want to do is mistake careful for something it's not.

So you just lie there. In the sun. In your bikini. Being extremely normal about everything.

"You're going to burn," Paige says a few minutes later

You open one eye. She's looking at you now, apparently having given up on the horizon.

"I have SPF 50 on."

"Your shoulders."

You lift your head and look at your shoulders. She might be right, they're looking a little pink. You reach for your bag and dig around for the sunscreen and twist to get your back and immediately realize the fundamental geometric problem with this plan.

You hold the bottle out to her without saying anything.

She takes it. Also without saying anything.

Her hands are warm from the sun. That's the first thing. Just warm, and careful, and she does it quickly and efficiently like she's trying to complete a task rather than touch you, which is somehow worse than if she'd been slow about it. Like the effort of keeping it neutral is the thing that makes it feel like anything but.

"Done," she says. Her voice is completely even.

"Thanks." Yours is too.

You lie back down.

The wave that comes in about thirty seconds later is big enough that the spray reaches you both and you sit up laughing, wiping salt water off your face, and Paige is laughing too and for a second everything is just light. Easy. Her laughing with her head tipped back, water on her eyelashes, the sun doing something completely unreasonable to her face.

You look away first.

"Wanna get in the water?"

"Not right now; but you can go in!"

"No ill wait"

She doesnt.

She goes in the water around one.

You watch her from behind your sunglasses like the coward you are.

She wades out to her waist and then dives under a wave clean and comes up pushing her hair back and she's just built like an athlete, obviously, you knew that, but knowing it and watching her move through water in real time are two different categories of information and your brain is filing this one somewhere it probably shouldn't.

She comes back up the beach dripping and drops back onto her towel and shakes her head like a dog, which should not be charming, and is.

"Cold?" you ask.

"Perfect actually." She lies back. Water running off her collarbone. Eyes closed. "You should go in."

"Maybe in a minute."

You look back at your book. You read the same sentence approximately six times.

Tyler comes down at two looking significantly more human than he had at noon, bringing with him a bag of snacks from the house and the energy of someone who has just gotten off a work call and is aggressively committed to not thinking about it anymore.

"Okay," he says, dropping onto the sand between you both like he belongs there, which he does, "someone explain to me why we haven't rented jet skis yet."

"Because we've been here three days," you say.

"Exactly. Three wasted days."

"We've been on the beach every day, Tyler."

"Sitting on the beach. Passively experiencing the ocean." He looks at Paige. "Back me up."

Paige has her eyes open now, propped on her elbows, looking at him with the fond exasperation of seven years of friendship. "I mean jet skis would be fun."

"See." Tyler points at her. "She gets it."

"She's agreeing with you to be polite," you say.

"I'm agreeing with him because jet skis are objectively fun," Paige says.

You look at her. She looks at you. There's something dancing in her expression that she pulls back before it becomes anything.

"Fine," you say. "Jet skis."

Tyler's already on his phone looking up rentals. Paige sits fully up, wrapping her arms around her knees again, and tilts her face up to the sun, and you watch the line of her throat for exactly one second before you look back at your book and commit, genuinely commit, to reading an actual full sentence.

You manage two.

The jet ski place is a twenty minute walk up the coast and Tyler chats the whole way about nothing in particular, which you're grateful for because it means you don't have to. Paige walks on his other side and you're just three people walking up a beach in the middle of the afternoon, easy and unhurried, and it's fine, it's all completely fine.

Except at some point Tyler stops to take a call, "sorry, sorry, two minutes" and suddenly it's just you and Paige standing on the wet sand watching the waves come in, and the thing about Paige when it's just the two of you is that the air gets different. Not bad different. Just heavier somehow. More present.

"He's never going to be off that phone," you say.

"He never is." She's looking out at the water. "He was like this at UConn too. Always three things at once."

"Did it drive you crazy?"

"Constantly." A beat. "He's also one of the most loyal people I've ever met so I forgive him basically everything."

You look at her sideways. "He talks about you the same way."

She doesn't say anything. Just nods, something soft crossing her face.

"He was scared, you know," you say. "When you got hurt that first time. Junior year. He didn't say it but I could tell."

Paige is quiet for a moment. "I didn't know that."

"He watched every game. Every single one. Still does." You pause. "We both do."

She turns and looks at you then. Really looks at you. And for a second there's nothing careful about it at all — just her, actually looking, like she forgot to put the guard up.

"Yeah?" she says. Quiet.

"Yeah," you say. Just as quiet.

Tyler's voice gets louder behind you and Paige looks away and you look away and by the time he jogs back over to you both you're just two people standing on a beach, easy and unhurried, completely fine.

The jet skis are fun.

You don't think about her hands on your shoulders for the rest of the afternoon.

You think about them the entire rest of the afternoon.

°•○●○•°

The bonfire was Tyler's idea, obviously.

Someone down the beach, friends of friends of whoever, the kind of loose social web that only exists in summer places like this, had texted him about it Thursday night and he'd said yes on behalf of all three of you before either of you knew about it, which is so deeply Tyler that neither of you even bothered being annoyed.

You wear a white sundress.

You don't think about who you're wearing it for.

It's already going by the time you get there, maybe forty people spread across the sand around a fire that someone clearly put actual effort into, big and clean and throwing gold light in every direction.

Music from a speaker somewhere. People with drinks. The kind of easy summer night that feels like it exists outside of real time, like nothing that happens here quite counts.

Tyler dissolves into the crowd within approximately four minutes. You watch him go with zero surprise.

"Every time," Paige says next to you.

"Every single time." You look around. "Drink?"

"Yeah."

You find the cooler and Paige grabs two beers and hands you one and you clink them together without making it a thing, which is how most things are between you now, small and easy on the surface, something else entirely underneath.

The fire is warm. The night is clear. Someone's playing a song you half recognize and like enough to not want to identify in case knowing what it is ruins it somehow.

You're standing close to Paige. Not touching. Just close, the way you've been getting close over the past few days, proximity becoming its own kind of language neither of you has named yet.

You see her before she sees you.

Across the fire, maybe thirty feet away, talking to a guy in a linen shirt who is gesturing about something with his beer. Dark hair. Leather jacket despite the heat, which tracks. She hasn't changed that much.

Your stomach does something complicated.

Maya.

You dated for eight months, sophomore and junior year of high school. It ended fine, as those things go, not dramatically, just the slow acknowledgment that you wanted different things, that you were heading different directions, that the distance between Boston and wherever Maya had ended up was a geographical fact neither of you wanted to argue with. You hadn't ended badly. You'd just ended.

You hadn't known she'd be here.

You take a sip of your beer.

Paige isn't watching you. She's talking to someone Tyler introduced her to earlier, a guy named something she's already forgotten, doing the thing she does at social things where she's polite and present and giving about sixty percent of her actual attention. The other forty percent she cannot fully account for.

She finds you in the crowd without really deciding to.

You're across the fire now, talking to a girl Paige doesn't recognize. Dark hair, easy smile, standing close to you in the specific way people stand close when they have history with the person they're talking to.

Not aggressively close. Just familiar close. The kind of close that doesn't ask permission because it doesn't think it needs to.

Paige watches you laugh at something she says.

The forty percent of her attention sharpens into something much less comfortable.

She looks away. Back at the guy she's been half talking to. Nods at something he says. Takes a long sip of her beer.

Looks back.

You're still talking to her. The girl has her hand on your arm now, briefly, the way you touch someone when you want to make a point land. You don't move away from it.

Paige's jaw does something she doesn't give it permission to do.

Tyler materializes at her shoulder the way he does, appearing from nowhere with a fresh beer and the energy of someone having an excellent time.

"You good?" he asks, following her eyeline without subtlety.

"Fine. Who's that?"

"Who?"

"Girl talking to your sister."

Tyler looks. His expression shifts into something recognizing. "Oh. That's Maya."

The name doesn't mean anything to Paige yet. "Friend of yours?"

"No." He takes a sip of his drink. "They dated. Like junior, senior year of high school I think."

The information lands somewhere in Paige's chest and just sits there, warm and unwelcome.

"Oh," she says.

"They ended fine apparently. She never really talked about it much after." He shrugs, easy about it the way Tyler is easy about most things. "She doesn't really do the whole dwelling thing. You know how she is."

Paige does know how you are. That's the problem. She's been learning how you are for four days now and somehow it feels like longer and somehow it also feels like she's barely started and she does not have anywhere safe to put that information.

"Right," she says.

Tyler is already getting distracted by someone across the fire. "Be back," he says, already moving.

Paige stands there alone with her beer and the fire and the completely reasonable emotion she is absolutely not having.

You extract yourself from Maya around nine-thirty, paige noted.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't even uncomfortable really .

Maya is still warm, still funny, still the person you spent eight months caring about, just in the past tense and sealed over cleanly. She's living in San Diego now. She seems happy. You seem happy. You hug at the end of it and it feels like closing a book you'd already finished.

You find Paige standing slightly apart from the main group, closer to the water, looking out at the dark.

"Hey," you say, stopping beside her. "Where'd Tyler go?"

"Somewhere." She nods vaguely in the direction of the crowd. Her voice is easy, her jaw is not.

You look at her profile. "You okay?"

"Fine." A beat. "Who was that?"

The question is casual. Completely casual. Nothing in it at all.

"Maya," you say. "We went to high school together."

Paige nods. Takes a sip of beer.

"We dated," you add, because you're not sure why you're adding it, only that it feels weird not to. "For a while. It ended fine."

Something moves across Paige's face. Fast, like a cloud shadow. Gone before you can name it.

"Cool," she says. Neutrally.

"Cool," you echo.

The fire crackles behind you. The waves come in. Someone down the beach laughs at something and the sound carries across the water and dissolves.

"She was looking at you like it didn't end that fine," Paige says. Quietly. Still looking at the water.

You turn to look at her. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." She shakes her head slightly. "Forget it."

"Paige."

She looks at you then. And there it is, the thing she's been keeping careful, the thing she's been filing away and rerouting and keeping at a managed distance for four days, right there on the surface, just for a second. Unguarded. Unruly.

Your heart does something it has no business doing.

"Forget it," she says again, softer. "I'm just—" She looks away. Back at the water. "I don't know."

You don't say anything. You stand there in the dark next to her while the fire throws light across the sand and the music drifts from somewhere and the waves just keep coming in, steady and indifferent to both of you.

After a while your arm presses against hers, just barely, just the outside of your shoulder against the outside of hers.

She doesn't move away.

Neither do you.

Tyler finds you both like that twenty minutes later, side by side, quiet, watching the water, and announces he's hungry and has identified a taco truck a mile up the coast and is anyone coming because he's going regardless.

You both go.

The walk is loud with Tyler between you, which is fine, which is good, which gives both of you time to rebuild whatever walls the last twenty minutes took down.

By the time you're eating tacos on a low wall outside the truck, Tyler holding court about something that happened at work last year, Paige is laughing again and you're laughing and it's easy.

It's easy.

You're fine.

"Olay let's get moving im tired"

Walking back it's dark enough that the path is narrow and Tyler goes ahead because he knows the way and suddenly you're just behind him, just the two of you, close on the dark path.

Paige's hand brushes yours once.

Then again.

She doesn't take it. Doesn't close the distance. Just the back of her hand against the back of yours, twice, in the dark, where nobody can see and nothing has to be named.

You keep walking.

You don't say anything.

You don't have to.

°•○●○•°

Tyler leaves on Friday morning.

Not for long, just a night, a work thing in LA he couldn't get out of, some dinner with clients he'd been vague about all week.

He tells you both Thursday night, apologetic in that way he gets when he knows he's abandoning ship, and you tell him it's fine and Paige tells him it's fine and he looks between you both like he's doing math he can't quite finish.

"You two will be okay?" he asks.

"Tyler," you say. "We're adults."

"I know, I just—" He stops. Makes a face. "Never mind. I'll be back Saturday morning."

He leaves at seven AM.

The house gets very quiet.

You don't even see Paige until almost ten.

You've been on the deck with your coffee and your notes, doing a very convincing impression of someone who is completely unbothered by the fact that it's just the two of you in a beach house for the next twenty four hours, when she comes through the sliding door in an oversized hoodie and shorts with her hair still messy from sleep and her eyes at about half capacity.

She drops onto the couch across from you.

You hand her your coffee without thinking.

She takes it without thinking.

You go inside and make yourself another one.

When you come back out she's more awake, sitting with her knees pulled up, looking out at the water. The morning is overcast for the first time all week, the sky a soft grey that makes everything feel quieter than usual. Closer somehow.

"Tyler texted me," she says. "He made it."

"He texts me every time he arrives somewhere like I'm his mom."

"He does that to me too." She wraps both hands around the mug. "I think it's sweet."

"It is sweet. I still feel like his mom."

She smiles into the coffee.

Surprisingly, It rains by noon.

Sunny dry malibu is cover with a little water amd there's no thunder, no wind, just a steady soft rain that comes in off the ocean and settles over everything like it has nowhere better to be. The beach empties.

The light goes silver. The sound of it on the roof is the kind of sound that makes you want to stay inside and not do anything that requires effort.

You make lunch. Paige sits on the kitchen counter eating crackers and watching you like you're mildly interesting television, which you pretend not to notice while noticing completely.

"You can help," you say.

"You look like you don't need help."

"That's not the point."

She picks up another cracker. "What do you want me to do."

"Chop those tomatoes."

She hops off the counter and comes to stand next to you at the cutting board and you hand her the knife and she chops tomatoes with the focused precision of someone who has never really cooked but is not going to admit that. You watch her for a second.

"Not bad," you say.

"Don't condescend to me."

"I'm genuinely complimenting your tomato technique."

"You're humoring me."

"Do you even know how to spell condescending?"

"Probably not"

"Paige. The tomatoes look great."

She points the knife at you, but she's smiling, and you turn back to what you're doing and the kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and rain and it's the most domestic thing and you can't think about it too hard or something will crack.

After lunch you end up on the big sectional in the living room, which is the only logical response to a rainy afternoon in a beach house. Paige finds something to watch, a documentary about deep sea creatures that she claims is interesting and you claim sounds terrible and you're both wrong, it's actually excellent.

You're on opposite ends of the couch at first.

By the second episode you're not.

It happens gradually, the way those things do, you pulling a blanket over your legs, her shifting to see the screen better, the couch being large but not that large, and by the time the third episode starts you're close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off her if you paid attention, which you are not doing, which you are absolutely doing.

The rain keeps coming. Soft and steady.

On screen something luminescent drifts through black water.

"This is genuinely beautiful," you say quietly.

"Told you."

"You told me it was interesting. Not beautiful."

"Both."

You look at her. She's looking at the screen, face soft in the grey light, and there's something about Paige in unguarded moments when she's not performing anything, not being an athlete or a public person or Tyler's best friend, that gets you somewhere undefended every time.

She feels you looking.

Turns her head.

You're close. You're closer than you've let yourselves be, actually, because usually one of you shifts before it gets here, before it gets to the point where you could count eyelashes.

But the rain and the blanket and the three episodes of deep sea creatures have apparently worn down whatever border control you'd been running.

Neither of you says anything.

Her eyes drop. Just briefly. Just for a half second. Just enough.

Your heart is extremely loud.

"We can't—," she says. Low. Like a warning she's giving herself as much as you.

"I know," you say.

"I can't—" She stops. Something working across her face. "Tyler is—"

"I know."

"And you're—" Another stop. Like she can't finish the sentence because finishing it would require her to say something out loud that she's been keeping below the surface. "You're twenty."

"I'm aware of how old I am."

"I'm just" She exhales. Looks away for a second. Back. "I'm trying to be responsible about this."

"Okay," you say. Carefully. "What does responsible look like."

She doesn't answer right away. The rain fills the silence. Something glowing drifts across the TV screen neither of you are watching anymore.

"It looks like not doing something that makes everything complicated," she says finally. "With Tyler. And with" She gestures vaguely between you. "Whatever this is."

"Whatever this is," you repeat

"Yeah."

You look at her. She looks at you. The responsible thing and the actual thing sitting right next to each other in the grey afternoon light and not resolving into anything clean.

"Okay," you say again. Quietly.

She nods. Looks back at the screen.

You look back at the screen.

The blanket is still over both your legs. Her shoulder is still against yours. Neither of you moves any further apart than you already are, which is not very far.

Responsible.

°•○●○•°

It's almost five when the documentary ends and the rain is still going and Paige gets up to get water and you stretch out across the couch and stare at the ceiling and try to do something useful with the inside of your chest.

She comes back and stops when she sees you lying there and for a second she just looks at you the way she's been not looking at you all week and your stomach drops.

She sets her water down.

Sits back on the couch. Not where she was, further down, near your feet, which is safer, which is the right call.

"Can I ask you something?" she says.

"Yeah."

"Maya." She says it carefully. "Was that... was she the last person you were with?"

You look at the ceiling. "No. There was someone at Harvard first year." A pause. "Why."

"Just wondering."

"Paige."

"It's not.." She rubs the back of her neck. "I don't know why I asked."

"Yes you do."

The rain. The ceiling. The specific silence of someone trying to be responsible.

"Yeah," she says finally. "I do."

You sit up slowly. Turn to look at her. She's already looking at you, and she doesn't look away this time, and the distance between responsible and everything else is about twelve inches and neither of you is moving toward it and neither of you is moving away.

"Paige," you say softly.

"Don't," she says. Just as soft. "If you say my name like that I'm not going to—" She stops. Jaw tight. Eyes on yours. "I'm trying."

"I know."

"I really am trying."

"I know," you say. "Me too."

Her hand is on the couch between you. Just resting there. You look at it and she looks at you looking at it and the moment stretches out like taffy, thin and taut and not breaking yet.

You put your hand over hers.

Just that. Just your hand over hers, on the couch cushion, in the grey rainy light, not breaking anything, not starting anything, just there.

She turns her hand over slowly.

Laces her fingers through yours.

You both look at the rain-blurred window.

Neither of you speaks.

You stay like that until the light changes.

Tyler texts at seven.

«Dinner running late. Probably staying the night. Back tomorrow morning. Don't burn the house down.»

Paige reads it twice. Sets her phone face down on the kitchen counter. Doesn't say anything.

You read it over her shoulder because you'd heard the buzz and come in from the deck and you're close enough that you can, and when you look up from the screen you're already looking at each other and the thing that's been sitting between you all day, through the documentary and the hand-holding and the careful careful careful, shifts into something that doesn't have a responsible answer anymore.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay," she says.

Neither of you means the text.

You make dinner because doing something with your hands feels necessary.

Paige sits on the counter again and watches you again and it's the same as lunch except it isn't, except the rain has stopped and the evening light is coming through the kitchen windows all pink and gold and everything feels thinner somehow.

Like the day wore down the distance between what you're doing and what you want to do until there's barely any separation left.

She's been quiet since the text. Not uncomfortable quiet but processing quiet. You know the difference now.

You're plating pasta when she says, "I've been thinking about you since I got hre."

You go very still.

"Like — not just—" She stops. Starts again. "Since I pulled into the driveway and you were at the door. I haven't stopped."

You put the spoon down. Turn around.

She's still on the counter, legs hanging, hands gripping the edge, looking at you with the most unguarded expression you've ever seen on her face. No careful. No rerouting. Just Paige, looking at you, saying the true thing.

"That's a problem," you say softly. "Because same."

"Tyler—"

"Is in LA," you say. "And we're here. And I'm so tired of being responsible."

Something breaks open in her expression.

She gets off the counter.

She crosses the kitchen slowly, which is somehow worse than if she'd moved fast, because slow means deliberate, slow means chosen, and by the time she stops in front of you your heart is so loud you're surprised she can't hear it.

She reaches up and tucks a piece of hair behind your ear. Just that. Just her fingers brushing your cheek, gentle and careful, like she's been wanting to do it and is finally letting herself.

"Tell me to stop," she says quietly. "If you want me to stop."

"Paige."

"I mean it. Say the word and I—"

You close the distance.

It's soft at first, barely there, just your lips against hers, tentative, like asking a question. Her breath catches. Her hand that was at your cheek slides back into your hair and then she's kissing you back and it's not tentative anymore, it's warm and slow and so certain, like she's been sure about this for longer than either of you said out loud.

You pull back after a moment. Look at her.

Her eyes are still closed. Open slowly

"Hi," you say.

Something between a laugh and a breath leaves her. "Hi."

You kiss her again and this one isn't soft this one has four days of careful and rerouting and hands on the couch and "I'm trying" behind it and it lands like that, full and unresolved, her hands in your hair and yours gripping the front of her hoodie and the kitchen counter cold against your back where she's walked you into it without either of you noticing.

She pulls back just enough to breathe. Presses her forehead to yours.

"I've wanted to do that since the bonfire," she says against your mouth.

"I've wanted to do that since the sunscreen," you say back.

She laughs the best laugh, and kisses you again before it's finished.

Dinner eventually gets cold.

You eat it eventually, at the kitchen island, sitting close enough that your knees are touching, and it tastes fine cold, actually, and Paige keeps looking at you between bites like she's making sure you're real, which you find devastating in the best way.

"Stop," you say.

"Stop what."

"Looking at me like that."

"Like what." But she's smiling.

"Like you're surprised."

She puts her fork down. Turns to face you more fully. "I am a little surprised."

"Why."

She reaches over and tucks the same piece of hair back again, slower this time, deliberate. "Because you're..." She shakes her head. "You've been making me crazy all week and I've been trying so hard and I don't" She laughs quietly. "I don't usually lose."

"At what."

"At anything."

You look at her. "You didn't lose."

The look she gives you then, soft and complicated and something that's trying not to be too much too fast, lands somewhere in your chest and stays there.

later , the dishes done, the lights low, the kind of easy quiet you've been building all week settling over the house, it happens again in the hallway.

You're heading upstairs and she's right behind you and you stop on the landing and turn around and she's one step below you which puts you at the same height for once and you've barely processed that before her hands are on your waist and she's kissing you again, slower this time, like she's not rushing anywhere, like she has time, like she's planning on this.

Your back meets the wall of the landing and you don't mind at all.

She kisses you like she means it. Like she's been thinking about how to do it and is taking her time getting it right.

Her hands move from your waist to your jaw, tilting you up slightly, and you make a sound that surprises you and feel her smile against your mouth.

"Paige," you say against her lips.

"Mm."

"We're in the hallway."

"I know."

"Just noting it."

She pulls back enough to look at you. You're both breathing a little fast. Her hands are still on your jaw, thumbs tracing lightly, and she looks at you the way she's been not letting herself look at you all week, open and warm and completely ungoverned.

"Come here," she says quietly.

She takes your hand and leads you down the hall and you go, easy and certain, and the house settles around you both in the dark, quiet and keeping its secrets.

°•○●○•°

The morning is all gold light through thin curtains.

You're aware of it slowly ,the warmth, the sound of the ocean, the particular softness of actually having slept well for the first time all week. You're on your side. There's a hand resting loosely at your waist.

You don't move.

Paige is still asleep behind you, breathing slow and even, and you lie there in the gold morning and let yourself have it for a minute before the complicated parts have to start. Before Tyler comes back and the real world has opinions and everything has to be figured out.

Just this first.

Just the light and the waves and her hand at your waist and the specific feeling of something you wanted actually happening.

Her breathing shifts. She's waking up.

Her hand at your waist tightens slightly, instinctive, like she's checking.

"Hey," she says. Sleep rough and low.

"Hey," you say back.

A pause. The ocean.

"You okay?" she asks.

You turn over. She's looking at you, morningsoft and a little uncertain, like she's waiting to see what version of this you're bringing into the daylight.

You kiss her once. Short and sure.

"Yeah," you say. "I'm good."

The uncertainty leaves her face. Something easier replaces it, relief, warmth, something that's trying not to be too much too fast and not fully succeeding, and you think that's probably exactly what your face is doing too.

Her phone buzzes on the nightstand.

You both look at it.

«On my way back. ETA 10am. Someone make coffee.»

Tyler.

You look at each other.

"Okay," Paige says.

"Okay," you say.

Neither of you moves for another thirty seconds.

Then you both do.

°•○●○•°

Tyler comes back at ten-thirteen with a gas station coffee and a breakfast burrito he's already halfway through and the energy of someone who slept fine in a hotel and has no idea his entire house shifted on its axis while he was gone.

"Miss me?" he says, dropping onto the kitchen stool.

"Desperately," you say, from behind your own coffee, which you are holding with both hands because they need something to do.

Paige is on the deck.

She's been on the deck since nine-forty-five, which is when Tyler texted that he was twenty minutes out, which is when something in her face closed over like a shutter coming down. You'd watched it happen and hadn't known how to stop it and had just stood in the kitchen listening to her slide the glass door shut behind her.

Tyler looks around. "Where's Paige?"

"Outside."

He nods, already on his phone. "Cool. What's the plan today, I was thinking we could drive up the coast, there's this place that does—"

You stop listening, You're watching Paige through the glass.

She's standing at the railing with her back to you, looking at the water, and her shoulders are doing the thing they do when she's working something out. Tight. Held up. Like she's load-bearing something heavy and doesn't want anyone to see the effort.

She's fine at breakfast.

That's the thing about Paige, she's so good at fine. She comes back inside when Tyler calls her, she laughs at his stories, she eats her eggs and drinks her coffee and is completely, entirely, convincingly fine, and you sit across from her and watch her be fine and feel something cold settling in your chest.

She doesn't look at you wrong. Doesn't avoid your eyes completely, because that would be a tell.

She looks at you exactly as much as she should, exactly as naturally as she would have four days ago, and that precision, the care it takes to calibrate it that exactly, is somehow the worst part.

Under the table, once, her knee presses briefly against yours.

Gone before it's anything.

You drink your coffee.

The drive up the coast is Tyler's idea, as everytging is, and you go because not going would require an explanation and explanations are the one thing nobody in this car is equipped for right now.

Tyler drives. You're in the passenger seat. Paige is in the back with the window down and her sunglasses on and her elbow resting on the door, and you watch her in the side mirror more than you watch the road and she doesn't watch you back, which is information.

Tyler talks the whole way. You love your brother. You have never been more grateful for his inability to tolerate silence.

The place he had in mind is a seafood spot on a cliff overlooking the water, the kind of place that has a wait but Tyler somehow always gets around, and you're sat at a table on the outdoor terrace with the ocean spread out below and it's objectively beautiful and you feel nothing about it.

Paige sits across from you.

She takes her sunglasses off when you sit down and for one second, just one, she looks at you with the real thing, tired and conflicted and sorry in advance, before Tyler is pulling menus over and asking what everyone wants and the second closes.

°•○●○•°

The dinner is fine.

Two couples get seated at the table next to yours midway through, friends of Tyler's from college, the kind of easy addition that Tyler facilitates effortlessly, and suddenly your table of three is a table of seven and the conversation opens up and gets louder and easier to hide inside.

You hide inside it. Paige hides inside it. Tyler doesn't need to hide inside it because Tyler doesn't know he's hiding.

The wine is good. The food is good. The sun does its evening thing over the water and it's all so beautiful and easy on the surface, and underneath it you're sitting with the memory of gold morning light and her hand at your waist and the specific feeling of something real, and you're watching it get buried in real time and you can't do anything about it at this table, in this company, with your brother three feet away.

It's one of Tyler's friends. Jake, loud, already on his third glass who does it.

He's talking about someone's situation, some mutual friend's drama, something about a guy who dated his friend's sister, and he's laughing about it in that way people laugh about things they think are obviously ridiculous, and Tyler, easy, unbothered, not knowing what he's doing at all, says:

"Yeah, that's just a line you don't cross. Your friend's sister is off limits. It's like ,that's the one rule, right? You just don't."

He's laughing. Jake is laughing. The table is doing the thing tables do when everyone agrees on something comfortable.

You go very still.

You don't look at Paige.

You don't have to.

You can feel it from across the table, the way she goes quiet, the way her wine glass stops halfway to her mouth, the way she puts it back down. The way she laughs, a beat late, just enough to not be noticeable.

You look at your plate.

You eat your fish.

You don't look at her for the rest of dinner.

And a couple minutes later,"its been a good night guys, but we have to go"

The drive back is quiet.

Tyler is a little wine-warm and happy and talks about the couples you'd had dinner with and you answer when he asks you things and Paige answers when he asks her things and in the side mirror her face is turned to the window, profile unreadable, and the coastal road unspools ahead of you in the headlights.

At the house Tyler goes straight for the couch and you say you're tired and go upstairs and sit on the edge of your bed in the dark and wait.

You don't know what you're waiting for.

Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.

A knock at your door. Soft.

You already know.

"Come in," you say.

She closes the door behind her. Doesn't turn the light on. Stands there in the dark with her back against the door and her hands behind her and looks at you sitting on the edge of the bed and she looks, wrecked, actually, under the careful.

Like the fine she's been performing all day cost more than she had.

"Hey," you say quietly.

"Hey."

The ocean through the window. The sound of Tyler's TV distantly through the floor.

"You heard him," she says. Not a question.

"Yeah."

She exhales. Looks at the ceiling for a second. Back at you. "I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"Please—"

"Don't apologize to me, Paige. Not for that."

She closes her eyes briefly. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to..." She stops. Jaw working. "He's my best friend. He's been my best friend for seven years and I can't–" Another stop. "I can't be the person who goes behind his back. I can't be that."

"I'm not asking you to go behind his back."

"You're twenty," she says. Like it's a different argument. Like she's cycling through all of them.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it matters."

"It doesn't feel like it matters."

Something crosses her face. Raw and unguarded and painful. "No," she says quietly. "It doesn't. That's the problem."

You stand up. She doesn't move from the door.

"So what are you saying," you say.

She looks at you. "I think you know what I'm saying."

The space between you is small. Six feet maybe. Less.

"I think," she says carefully, "that last night was– I think it was the realest thing that's happened to me in a long time and I think that's exactly why I can't" Her voice catches slightly. Recovers. "I need to do this right. If there's a this. I need Tyler to know before there's a this and I don't know how to do that yet and until I do–"

"You need to stop," you say.

"I need to stop," she agrees. Like it costs her.

You stand there. Looking at each other. The dark room and the distant TV and the ocean outside just doing what it does regardless.

"Okay," you say finally.

"Okay," she says. Like it's the hardest word she's said all week.

She pushes off the door. Crosses the room slowly, like she's giving herself time to change her mind and overruling it with every step, and when she reaches you she stops and puts her hand on your face, just her palm against your cheek, gentle and certain, and looks at you up close for a long moment.

You let her.

She presses a kiss to your forehead.

Soft. Slow. Like a promise or an apology or both.

Then she drops her hand. Steps back.

"Goodnight," she says.

Her voice barely holds.

"Goodnight," you say.

Yours doesn't really either.

She goes. The door clicks shut behind her.

You sit back down on the edge of the bed in the dark.

The ocean comes in. Goes out. Comes in again.

You put your face in your hands.

Not for long. Just a minute. Just long enough to feel it fully before you have to put it somewhere manageable and figure out how to share a house with her for the rest of the summer like you didn't just watch something real walk back out the door on its own two feet.

Just a minute.

Down the hall, you don't hear her.

But if you did, maybe if walls were thinner, if the house was quieter, you'd hear Paige Bueckers sit on the edge of her own bed in her own dark room and not move for a very long time.

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